


Cedere Nescio, or, Extra Virgin Olive Oil

by dashielldeveron



Category: British Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), tom holland - Fandom
Genre: (Latin), College, College AU, Depression, Extreme Thirst, F/M, I love him, Language, Note: in scene shop you build sets, Oral Sex, Pining, Smut, Theatre, Tom is a theatre major, and you're a theatre minor, but that's college, dealing with mental health in a Big Way, gentle boy, i guess, soft boy, swears, the more vanilla he is the less vanilla i feel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 00:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15085058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashielldeveron/pseuds/dashielldeveron
Summary: You're being horny on main, but, like, in a classy way.And you're sure no one knows, because no one ever notices.





	Cedere Nescio, or, Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 i

Maybe you gave off a gay vibe? You really didn’t know. Would that the perception of your sexuality were as clear as those of Achilles and Patroclus.

 

You sit on the edge of the stage, taking a break from building sets. Tom’s up in the grid, adjusting lights and putting in gels, and his sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, by the grace of God. Even from this distance, his biceps ripple. His eyebrows are furrowed, lines drawn between them, as he bites his lower lip and sticks out his jaw very slightly.

 

You pop off the cap of a sharpie and hold it between your teeth, never letting it get wet, as you idly doodle _perfututum_ onto the inside of your arm, covering some parallel lines you made with something a little sharper. _Perfututum_ —it’s Latin for _totally fucked._ And it’s you.

 

Tom Holland’s untouchable, you know? Everyone, in the theatre department and out, wanted to be his friend; everyone wanted his approval or to impress him, and his genuine approval wasn’t easily earned. He dances through his classes with panache; everything is easy for him, a delight. His laughter reverberates off the walls of the arts building, and good _night_ , did you want to be the cause of his laughter. Sometimes you were, when you gathered enough courage to speak to him, to have a legitimate conversation instead of his instructions to you in scene shop.

 

He calls down to you to stand centre stage; he’s trying to aim a light in the right direction. You push up on your knees and jog over where he wants you. You would go anywhere he directed you, do anything he wanted, and he didn’t have a clue—that oblivious bastard.

 

A curl falls across his forehead as he bends over the PAR-can, and you, squinting, hold a hand over your eyes when he swings the light your way. He’s too bright for you to look at.

 

 

ii

The two of you are practising monologues due for class later that day. You’re alone in a hallway and holding his monologue in front of you. He’s sitting at your side and desperately running his hands through his hair as he strives to remembers the exact words.

 

“I am the dog,” you prompt him. His profile sharpens when he puckers his lips in concentration.

 

His eyes light up as he stares determinedly at the top of the lockers, not really seeing them. “I am the dog,” Tom says, bouncing his leg up and down and tapping his fingers on his knee, “Oh, the dog is me, and I am myself—”

 

He’s fidgeting too much. What you do in rehearsal determines what you do in performance, and this monologue isn’t a fidgeting sort of thing. He won’t stop fidgeting. Why’s he so nervous? Hector wasn’t even this nervous when he walked into battle and to his death. Tom is never nervous, so why is he now?

 

Hector, however, had verse upon verse written about him posthumously and a hero’s pyre, and Tom wasn’t a legend. You’ll make him one, and even if you don’t, you know he’ll be one some day.

 

“You’ve got to stop fidgeting,” you say, “Let’s find you something to hold instead of fidgeting.” Both of you glance to your sides in the hallway, but your backpacks are still in the scene shop. Nothing’s around. Inwardly, you beat your chest, fortifying all courage as Hector did for his troops—you roll your eyes in an exaggerated way and, in a stroke of rare brilliance, you say, “Here, hold this.”

 

You hold out your hand.

 

Tom’s face breaks into a grin, his even teeth showing, and he glances down at his lap before turning to you, crinkling his eyes in a different kind of smile, a closed-mouthed, tight-lipped thing of beauty that shows acceptance and gratefulness. Tom takes your hand, immediately lacing his fingers with yours, and he squeezes it firmly as he continues his monologue. His focus is no longer casually on the lockers but swops between your hands and your reactions. Tom tries to make you laugh, and he wrinkles his nose in triumph when he does.

 

When you move onto your monologue, Tom lazily twists the ring on your thumb between his own and his index finger. It’s not a purity ring, but it might as well be (it’s the one from _Lord of the Rings_ ). Tom doesn’t know that right now, _this_ moment, is the farther you’ve ever gone with a guy, that this instance of holding hands is the most intimate you have ever been.

 

You’ve never dated, never been kissed—watched as your friends loved and lost, went on rampages, and downloaded tinder. It’s not that you don’t want these things; on the contrary, according to a BDSM test you made everyone take, you’re the kinkiest piece of shit you know. You hear stories and read a lot of fanfic about one night stands, sex before romance, and loads of kinky shit—things you’d never do in your actual, real life for a couple of reasons, the primary one being that since you got overly attached to cars you drove behind for more than ten minutes, who knows what would happen to you if someone ate you out and never spoke to you again? So, it wasn’t entirely intentional, but you were (fuck, you hated this about you and yet couldn’t bring yourself to compromise [and _fuck_ , you hated this phrase]) waiting until marriage.

 

Tom slides the ring down to your knuckle. The skin where it usually sits is paler and softer than the rest of your thumb.

 

 

iii

 

Tom’s got bags under his eyes in scene shop today. His hair is dishevelled, roughed up like bed-head, and he’s got grey sweatpants hanging loosely around his hips. And he’s pissed.

 

When you ask him why, Tom says he had a tough voice lesson, but as the afternoon drags on (and you’re repairing an ancient piano with a staple gun), he, miraculously, allows himself to be vulnerable. He’s not doing okay, and it’s tearing him apart. His relationship with his parents is in an unfamiliar, rocky stage, and he’s lonely, so lonely; he’s secretly a ball of rage that he never shows (you wonder if you annoy him, especially when you talk about Greek culture). So much of Tom is hidden, because he’s insecure about it. He’s the only person you’ve ever met who can rival you in terms of self-deprecation, even though, in everyone’s eyes but his own, he has no reason for it.

 

Tom is furious at a lot of things, mostly himself, and you want him to be mad at you, in a safe, consensual bedroom sort of setting. He already was dominating socially in the scene shop, since he was more than capable at construction had to teach you, with unconditional patience, how to do anything, seeing as you had never picked up a power tool before this semester. Tom would order you about, and each time punched you in your stomach as you thought about taking commands up a notch. _Aut futue aut pugnemus_ : either we fuck or we fight.

 

His insecurities mirror your own, save for where he is rage, you are sorrow. Two sides of the same coin, down to your side effects of depression. Loneliness reigns.

 

At some point, he catches himself, climbs down from the ladder, and grabs both of your hands, grazing the ring on your thumb. “Thank you,” he says, his eyes wide (eyelashes dark against his skin), gripping your hands tighter to show his earnestness, “for listening. I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you; you don’t deserve that. I usually don’t—I’m sorry. You’re very kind. Thank you so much.”

 

“Don’t apologise,” you say, your fingers curving into the bend of his palms, “I like listening to you. You have worthwhile things to say, and everyone needs to be heard. Don’t feel like you’re burdening me—” You say this, because you worry about it yourself. “—I want to be involved in what you’re going through.”

 

 

iv

In one of the dreams between pressing snooze on your alarm and actually waking up, Tom wraps his hand around your wrist and leads you up the ladder to the grid, high above the rest of the stage. At the centre, where anyone could see, were anyone in the room, he releases your wrist, links his index fingers through the belt loops of your shorts, and yanks you close to him, his hipbones poking you briefly. Tom’s got your shoulder blades pressed on either side of a pipe holding up stage lights, and his tongue is between his teeth when he grins at you in the moment before.

 

Who was wearing strawberry chapstick? It doesn’t matter. His lips are pressed to yours, needy and wanting; you feel the crease of his brow through the kiss—don’t, you want to tell him, please relax, for one damn minute. He doesn’t bite but nibbles at your lower lip, and your tongue is on the inside of his teeth when he moves his hands from your belt loops to grip your waist, toying with the hem of your shirt. Your fingers curl into his hair, and you pull at the wisps at the nape of his neck. His breath hitches. Tom breaks the kiss, calls you _my girl_ with a dark inflection, and shifts to kiss your neck, once, before he drags his mouth down your chest, stopping to press his lips at the spot beneath your naval where your shirt has ridden up.

 

And he’s thrown your shorts somewhere across the grid; your underwear’s been tucked into his back pocket. Tom’s bottom lip is firm as he pushes it up underneath your clit (he’s got friction around all of it now); he sucks on it just _barely_ , and after testing how sensitive you were with the underside of his tongue, he smirks as he swops to the rougher topside. Your hips twitch. Tom holds you achingly still for too long; it doesn’t take the oracle of Delphi to know that you’re close—

 

But Tom keeps going after you’ve come, and you don’t want to chicken out for fear of what he’d think. With a shaking jaw, you keep your gaze on the ceiling, trying to zone out, because this is too much, all at once, and you can’t _ah,_ ouch, that’s a lot. Your thighs are quivering, and _yikes_ , please, no, stop, even though you still—

 

“I know it’s intense,” he says, the sound of an air pocket breaking in the second he pulls an inch away, “but you can take it.” Tom kisses your clit and reaches up for one of your hands, the one with the ring. “Be good for me.”

 

When your alarm goes off, your underwear is soaked, and when you wipe the rheum out of the corners of your eyes, you repeatedly snap the elastic against your skin as you debate whether or not taking a cold shower is worth it.

 

 

v

The final rehearsal before the show opens, you and Tom are alone backstage. He’s in the lead (and an argyle sweatervest), and you’re one of the minor ensemble characters. You’ve had a hell of a day and are on the cusp of a panic attack, and Tom notices. He guides you over to a private spot and leans on a stack of crates, resting his forearms on top. You copy him, and your shoulders touch.

 

“How do you do it, Tom? How do you manage to keep it together all of the time? You never seem to crack.” You don’t count that day he vented to you. It wasn’t quite the same.

 

Tom laughs through his nose and leans close to you. His breath hits your ear and the back of your neck as he says, “To be honest, I’m cracking right now.”

 

He’s got to be. Rehearsals running until past midnight every night with hundreds of lines in Shakespearean verse, long afternoons building sets, being on duty as an RA, not to mention classes and keeping up with his friends. Oh, and sleep, you suppose. He’s _had_ to shove everything he feels down so that he can deal with the next task. He hasn’t had time to think, and frankly, neither have you.

 

Tom insists he doesn’t want to talk about himself, because he’s been thinking a lot about that time you spoke to him about holy listening, how most people only wait for their turns to speak and how listening, genuinely, to help and to understand, was a gift that everyone deserves but hardly anyone receives. So, Tom takes your hand (again. It’s become practise for when it’s just the two of you, and you’re unsure how to handle this uncharted territory) and listens.

 

And thank _God_ someone finally is.

 

You’re facing him as you speak softly about how you essentially act as a therapist to everyone in the department (even though you are newly learning healthy behaviours yourself), because you want people to have someone who will listen. You check in with people who are going through hard times, and you usually end conversations by asking the person how he’s going to take care of himself later that day. Tom knows this. He’s been watching.

 

What he didn’t know was that no one listens to you back. Whenever you pry yourself open in a half-hearted attempt to be vulnerable, everyone clams up. They shut down. No one notices when you’re having a hard time—he nudges you at this, and you make a stupid noise, dismissing it. When you mention that no one’s noticed the burn marks on the inside of your forearm near your elbow, he could, for the first time, make out the small, circular burns in spite of the dark, blue light. Tom slumps against the crates, and he rubs the back of your hand with his thumb.

 

“I’m tired of taking care of everyone,” you say, “I want to be taken care of.”

 

You’re breaking your chains that protect you from being vulnerable. You can’t watch the shadows on the wall any more. You’ve got to walk out of Plato’s cave and let the sunlight blind you, even though you don’t have a word for sunlight yet, for all you’ve known is a tame fire.

 

Tom wraps his arm around your bare shoulders (your costume isn’t as modest as you’d like, but for now, you’re grateful). He presses a kiss to your temple and holds it there, and an alarm goes off in your head, as if you’re not the one truly experiencing this. When Tom removes his lips, his furrowed brow goes to their spot. “You’re safe with me,” he says after a bit, “I hear you, and I want to take care of you.”

 

Both of you jump when other actors start channelling behind you to get to their places. Tom has the first line, but he tightens his grip around your shoulders and quickly prays aloud for you.

 

 

vi

Closing night, the cast and crew goes to IHOP, and it’s a lot of overstimulation all at once. When they kick you out around one o’clock, your original driver is going home for the weekend, so you hitch a ride with Tom back to campus.

 

Tom is at a stop sign, his turn signal blinking to drive into the parking lot of your dorm, when you say, “I will pay you ten bucks to keep driving past the school.”

 

He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

 

“Please. I can’t go back there right now.”

 

With a wry smile, Tom flips off the signal and keeps driving into the night. The city is quiet but still awake, still shining. He cranks up his music and points out his favourite restaurant to you, saying he’ll take you there soon. Next week, you decide. Urban decay increases the farther you get away: flickering street lights, crumbling buildings, a lone shopping cart, that one vape shop that no one goes to unless you feel like getting shot. Neon lights bleed together through the car window, and the stars blur and mumble under his 90s hip-hop.

 

You take backroad after backroad, curving around trees and into the valley, just _going_ without knowing where, and eventually, you park near an overlook into the valley, showing the city teeming with a quiet energy, with a cemetery behind you in the trees.

 

You thank him again for how he’s been treating you during the run of the show; it’s incredible to have someone to depend on. To trust. He shrugs it off, and you talk about the show, how things could have gone better, how he did that one gesture just perfectly in the moment, how hey, you didn’t get all of your stage makeup off; let me get that for you, and Tom’s kissing you, lightly, barely, and he swipes some of your hair behind your ear. His nose prods yours when he breaks the kiss so that you open your eyes—he knows it was your first; he wants to make sure you’re okay. You nod, your mouth quirking upwards.

 

When you’re on his lap and his hands are in your hair (turns out you were the one with the hair-pulling thing, so die mad about it), neither of you are the strawberry chapstick ideal. You both taste like makeup remover, and sweat drips down between his shoulder blades and down your neck. Neither of you was performing for once. It was just the two of you, simple and vulnerable. You made Tom laugh when you pulled away to yawn, and you laughed yourself when you made him gasp at a simple kiss on his neck (muttering “ _Peccavi_ ,” and refusing to tell him what it meant, even when he threatened to…he couldn’t think).

 

It should’ve been much too early to do this, let alone ever consider it, but it was Tom Holland, who understood. Courage, dear heart. You’re not ready, but you can promise. He probably knows what it means by now; he’s clever. He’s probably guessed. Just _do_ it. Your cheek is pressed against his when you say, “It’s yours—” You twist your ring off your thumb and slid it onto his middle finger. “—if you want it.”

 

Tom shifts to kiss your cheek. “Not now. But someday, if you’re ready. If you want me to.” He smiles, and this time, you let the light blind you. “C’mon, love. Tell me what you want.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Peccavi_ \-- _I have sinned._
> 
> [here's the link](http://www.bdsmtest.org/prelims) to the BDSM test mentioned, if you'd like to take it.


End file.
